


Unsinkable

by Duck_Life



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Courtroom Drama, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-09-13 14:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9127096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: The murders of Glenn Rhee and Abraham Ford shake up small-town Alexandria and bring two grieving women together.





	1. Prologue

Tara gets contacted by the 911 dispatcher at the station and she’s calling out the address before it registers in her mind. “Robbery homicide at 177 Ashport Lane…” She freezes, her eyes on the sheriff, her hand on the phone. “Rick, that’s the pizzeria.”

“Carl,” he says, the name wrenched out of his throat, and then mechanically he’s moving out the door, Daryl struggling to keep up.

“Rick,” Daryl says, coming up behind him as Rick clambers into their squad car. “Hey.” His partner doesn’t seem to hear him. “ _Hey_.” He grabs Rick by the shoulder, and Jesus, the man’s eyes have never looked that crazed before, not even the night Lori died.

His mouth snaps open and shut like he’s going to say something and nothing comes out. Finally he settles on, “Carl,” and gets in the car.

“I know,” Daryl says, sliding in the passenger’s seat. “I know. But you gotta keep your head.”

The siren switches on. The car speeds away.

Alexandria’s not the biggest town, but that doesn’t mean it’s free of crime. Anywhere with people’s gonna have crime. It’s just usually more of the bike-theft variety. The last time they had a murder was the night Maggie Greene’s father was killed during a nasty dispute over farmland.

That was a long night, almost the longest of Rick’s life. Second to the night Lori died. Chasing down the suspect, the standoff, the shot he’d had to fire. And meeting Hershel Greene’s two daughters at the station, having to face them. Sitting with them while the realization sunk in that they no longer had a dad. God, the younger one wasn’t even out of high school at the time.

Rick’s not thinking about Beth and Maggie Greene when he pulls up to Pizza Portal. He’s thinking about his son.

He and Michonne had been thrilled when Carl got the job, though not surprised. The owner’s known them for years.

“Police!” Daryl calls, sweeping the area, gun in hand. Tara told them on the way that the suspect had fled the scene.

Rick can’t think about protocol, about his gun, about calling the medical examiner or canvassing or catching a criminal. He can’t be Sheriff Grimes. Just Dad.

“Carl,” he says, sprinting into the restaurant. “CARL.”

“I’m here.” The voice is small, scared, but familiar. “Dad, I’m here.” Rick pivots to see his son sitting at one of the tables. Different things click into his head at an uneven pace. The plate of spaghetti on the table. The cellphone sitting limp in Carl’s hand.

Carl’s bandage is gone, the scar tissue from his air rifle accident two years ago exposed. He’s spattered with blood. He’s crying. There’s a body on the floor behind the counter.

Daryl barrels into the pizza place then, scanning the room before he holsters his gun. “What the hell happened?” he says, looking at Carl, whose eye flits rapidly from Daryl to his father.

“H-he had a bat,” he manages, looking so much smaller than his sixteen years. Again Rick thinks back to the night Lori died, when Carl was scared and angry and small. But he didn’t look like this. He didn’t _sound_ like this. “He killed Glenn.”

The last piece clicks into place and then Rick and Daryl have a name to put to the blood on the floor, the body lying behind the counter.

“No,” Daryl says, moving toward Glenn’s body. “ _Shit_.” They hadn’t been that close, but everyone in town knew each other. He and Glenn used to play cards. They had _Game of Thrones_ viewing parties. They once made drunken (and unfulfilled) plans to start a brewery together.

And there he is, skull crushed, brains dashed across the scrubbed linoleum.

Rick’s got too much happening in his head. He’s thinking about the last time he spoke to Glenn, picking up a pizza on the way home last week. He’s thinking about poor Maggie, three months pregnant. He’s thinking about the fact that a man, a human person could walk in here with a fucking bat and kill someone in cold blood, let alone someone as good and kind as Glenn Rhee.

He’s thinking about that fact that his son is just sitting there shell-shocked, tears still drying on his cheek.

“Hey,” he says finally, his voice too rough and low. He coughs. “Carl. C’mere.”

They can hear backup piling up outside, folks from the coroner’s office, crime tech, probably the press. Daryl heads outside the meet them while Carl shakily makes his way toward Rick.

“He had a bat,” Carl says again, his face pale and bloodless, especially in comparison to the flecks of Glenn’s blood on his chin. “He was… he wanted all the money.”

“C’mere,” Rick says again, and when Carl’s finally close enough he pulls him in tight, one hand running up and down Carl’s arm like he needs to make sure his son’s really solid. “It’s over. It’s over.”

“He had a bat.”

“I know.”

“He killed Glenn,” Carl says again. “I couldn’t stop it… I couldn’t… Dad, I couldn’t stop it—”

“Shh,” Rick tells him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s over.”

But that’s not true, and it’s not over. The man with the bat is out there. This isn’t a restaurant anymore, it’s a crime scene. And for now, they can’t be father and son, they have to be the sheriff and a witness.

Rest in peace. Now get up and go to war. “I need to stay here,” Rick says. “I’m gonna… I’ll call Shane to take you to the station.”

“Yeah,” Carl says. “Okay.”

Rick and Shane weren’t partners anymore, or friends, or even really on good terms at all. Not after Lori. But. Desperate times.

So Shane takes Carl to the station. Rick stays with Daryl to work the scene. Pizza Portal gets taped up and photographed. Glenn’s body gets carted off to the morgue. The man with the bat walks free.

For a while.

Two weeks after Glenn’s death, a bar fight leads to a former army sergeant being followed back to his apartment and beaten to death with a bat wrapped in barbed wire.

This time they catch the guy.


	2. Bad News

“Thank you for meeting with me,” Maggie tells the two men sitting on the other side of her desk. She takes a breath to steady herself. It sucks giving Bad News. “Especially so late in the evening. Now, you’re Enid’s _second_ pair of foster parents, right?”

“Yes,” the taller one says, and she scrambles to remember their names. The short one is Something Raleigh. She can’t remember whether they both have the same last name. “We know she was having trouble adjusting earlier this semester but we… well, we hoped she was doing better.”

“No one should feel discouraged,” she says, offering her brightest of smiles while she fiddles with the forms on her desk. “Everyone adapts to new situations at different rates, and it’s not always a straight incline from bad to good.” She hesitates before delving into the Bad News. “But Enid’s missed a lot of school. And there’s only so much I can do as her guidance counselor. Pretty soon it’s gonna be fines, tickets, truancy officers.”

Tall Guy and Something Raleigh look upset, but not surprised. “We’ve talked to her,” Tall Guy says. “But—”

There’s a knock on the door, and then before Maggie can say anything, her office door swings open and a woman walks in— Tara Chambler. Glenn’s friend.

It takes Maggie a second to remember Tara’s also a police officer.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tara says, sounding completely drained. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, I just… I, um, need to speak to Ms. Greene.”

Enid’s foster parents look up at Tara, startled. “Should we…?”

“Aaron,” she says to Tall Guy, recognizing him, and Maggie makes a mental note to remember his name. “It, um. Yeah, it might be best if you. If you head out. I’m sorry.”

They leave and Maggie starts to get up. “Tara, what’s—”

“Sit down,” she says, and Maggie realizes the other woman is near tears. “Just… just sit, please.”

So she does. And Tara sits on the other side of the desk, and takes her hands, and Maggie feels like everything is backward. She should be on the other side of the desk, if she’s getting Bad News. That’s the Bad News side of the desk.

“Tara, what’s going on?”

Tara takes a deep breath. “Glenn’s restaurant was robbed earlier tonight,” she says, and Maggie swears her face has never looked so shattered. “A man went in with a bat and demanded all the money in the register.”

“Where’s Glenn?” Maggie demands, looking around like he might be hiding behind Tara. “I need to talk to him. I need to talk to him. Where is he?”

“Maggie—”

“Where is he? I… I need to talk to him.”

“Glenn’s dead, Maggie.”

Reason tells her she must be trembling, but that’s not what it feels like to Maggie. It feels like the earth is shaking around her, shaking and shaking and shaking without stilling once.

* * *

 

As soon as Sasha pulls into her building’s parking lot she sees the flashing police lights, the yellow tape, the officers all standing around. And naively, she’s hoping they’re all here for someone else’s apartment.

She cuts the engine and jumps out, marches toward the first cop she recognizes. “Daryl,” she calls out, beelining to him. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Shit,” he says, recognizing her from the fire station. They worked an arson case together once. “You live here?”

“Apartment seven-A,” she reels off.

“Fuck.” He loosens his shoulders, shakes his head, looks from Sasha to the apartment building and back again like he’s trying to figure out how to make the words come out. “You live with Abraham Ford?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” she says, and then she suddenly realizes what Daryl’s not saying. She tries to push past him. “I need to see him. I need to see him.”

But Daryl holds her back, and she’s probably strong enough to shove him aside on a good day. Not tonight, though.

“I need to see him,” she says again, her voice cracking.

“He’s dead, Sasha.” The words come without him thinking to phrase it better. “Fuck. Sasha. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Abraham’s dead.”

 

**ONE MONTH LATER**

 

The room in the YMCA has a big bulletin board papered with ads and flyers, announcements for potlucks and spin classes and bible studies. The rest of the wall sports sunny posters with inspirational sayings like “If only the birds with the most beautiful voices sang the forest would be very silent indeed” and “Hang in there” with a picture of a little cat on it and Sasha should _really_ probably be focusing on the woman speaking but it’s just. Hard.

Everything’s hard now.

“… new faces, well, we’re all new faces,” the woman chuckles, and then nervously adjusts her glasses. “I finally was able to get the Y to let us use this space and I felt like a women’s grief group is something that, um, that would really benefit everyone.” Another pause to fix her glasses. Sasha starts counting in her head, wishes she had a bottle of whiskey to turn it into a drinking game. “And, anyway, so, I’m Denise,” she continues. “I’m a psychologist and a licensed counselor, and, also, a few years ago I lost my twin brother. So I’ve been through what you’re going through.” Fidgets with her glasses. “Heck, I’m still goin’ through it. But… we’re all here, and we’re all gonna talk, and we’re all gonna be okay.”

Denise pauses like she’s waiting for some kind of reaction, but the other women in the circle just kind of sit and stare. She pushes her glasses up. “So, um, if we could just go around and everyone say your name, maybe tell us about yourself. A-and if you feel comfortable sharing your loss with us, feel free, but you don’t have to say anything you’re not comfortable with.”

There’s a silent struggle between the woman on her left and the woman on her right to figure out who has to speak first. The woman on the left loses, which means Sasha’s going second to last. She can’t figure out how she feels about that.

“Hi,” the woman on the left of Denise says, and her smile is just as misplaced and sunny as the inspirational posters. “I’m Jessie, I’m a stylist, and I have two boys. And I, um… my husband recently passed away.”

“I’m so sorry,” Denise says to her, and Sasha wonders if she’s planning to say that to all of them. Seems like it’d be easier to just hold your condolences for the end and do one big one. More efficient.

The next two are also widows, and then there’s a woman who lost her mother. The woman beside her says only, “Hi, I’m Carol,” and shares nothing else. Widow, widow, woman who lost her son. Sasha listens to the phrases they use— passed away, gone, lost, in a better place. It’s messed up.

The next woman looks vaguely familiar and Sasha can’t figure out why until she opens her mouth.

“Hi, I’m Maggie,” she says, brushing her short hair back out of her eyes. “I’m a guidance counselor at the high school, and, ah, I lost… I lost my husband.”

And then Sasha places her, even though she’s only seen her in person once, across a crowded police station. She’s seen her picture in the news.

Maggie’s here for the same reason she is. Same man. Same barbed wire bat.

Sasha’s distracted and doesn’t hear the two women before her, and then suddenly it’s her turn. “Um,” she says, her mouth suddenly dry. “Um. Hi, everyone, I’m Sasha. I’m a firefighter.” They’re all watching her and the collar of her shirt feels too tight and the room’s too bright and Denise keeps adjusting those damn glasses. “My boyfriend was murdered,” she says, and her chest feels tight and her ears feel hot but she keeps going. “Yeah, I’m here because an asshole broke into my apartment and beat my boyfriend to death. So. Okay.”

She ducks her head, finished, feeling everyone in the room staring at her. After a long, long silence, the last woman starts talking, and Sasha feels like it’s probably safe to look up.

When she does, she realizes Maggie is watching her.

Once the group finally ends, after Dr. Denise drones on about grief and closure and the five stages and yadda yadda yadda, Sasha tries to escape but she gets stopped at the door by Maggie. “Hey,” she says. “You’re Sasha Williams.”

It’s not a question. “Maggie Greene.”

“Maggie Rhee.”

“Right,” Sasha says, “sorry.” And then she feels stupid. Of course she’s sorry. “I mean, I… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Me too,” Maggie says, and then something happens and the next thing Sasha knows, Maggie Rhee is wrapped around her like an anaconda.

“Oh,” Sasha mumbles, blowing the other woman’s hair out of her face. “So we’re. Hugging. Okay.”

“I really appreciate what you said,” Maggie says, her breath in Sasha’s ear. “I just don’t… I haven’t even known what to say to people. It’s so bizarre, how he died… And you just out and said it. You’re really brave, you know?”

And, well, yeah, she does know. She runs into burning buildings on the daily. But it seems rude to say, “Yeah, I know,” so Sasha stays silent.

Finally, Maggie releases her and steps back. “We’re gonna be alright,” she says, as if she knows everything. “Both of us.”

“Uh-huh,” Sasha sighs, leaning against the doorframe. “That’s the hard part.”

Maggie nods, biting her lip. And then— “You wanna get some dinner?”

No. Sasha wants to go home and have a drink and try to get through the night without screaming. She wants to put it all behind her and just _forget_ , and that’s hard to do when this Maggie-Rhee-sized reminder of Abraham’s death wants to be friendly.

So she’s not really sure why she says, “Yeah, what’d you have in mind?”


	3. Best Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for references to self harm and ableist slurs.

Andrea’s on her way back from the lounge when Michonne knocks into her and nearly upends her coffee. “Jeez, Mich, what’s—”

“He _cannot_ do this,” she fumes, and Andrea puts together Michonne’s mood and the door she just slammed behind her.

“What’s that jackass Gimple making you do now?”

Over the years their boss had become known for assigning them crappy cases and then dragging them through a shitload of unnecessary busywork. Didn’t matter. Andrea and Michonne were kickass lawyers.

Michonne shakes her head, her lower lip trembling with anger. “He assigned me to the Negan defense.”

Andrea almost drops her coffee mug. “He can’t do that.”

“That’s what I said,” Michonne says, blowing past her toward the lounge. Andrea spins right around and follows her. “Apparently… the defendant ‘warmed to me’ when I got called to represent him the night he was… the night…” She shakes her head, locs bouncing in her fury, and pours herself a cup from the carafe. “And he won’t take a fucking plea bargain even though that’s his best bet. People are calling for the death penalty and I can’t actually say I disagree. What he did to Glenn…” She trails off and takes a gulp of hot coffee.

“That’s fucked up,” Andrea says. “And it’s… I mean, it’s an un-fucking-believable conflict of interest.”

Mouth still full of coffee, Michonne nods vigorously. To be fair, in a town this small any lawyer’s going to bump into conflicts of interest. But Carl Grimes is basically Michonne’s son. Glenn was like family, too.

“So what are you gonna do?”

Michonne sets her coffee cup down on the counter, steel in her eyes. “I’m gonna do my damn job,” she says, nodding like she needs to reassure herself. “I’m gonna put together a strong defense. I’m gonna make sure that no one can ever say he didn’t get a fair trial, that no one can ever say he had an incompetent attorney. I’m gonna make sure that no one can ever say he didn’t deserve everything that’s coming to him.”

* * *

 

Maggie scans the Olive Garden menu with an eagle eye, examining the dishes carefully, considering her options. Glenn used to tease her for it, knowing she’d always get the exact same thing as last time.

Across the table, Sasha tells their waiter to keep the breadsticks coming and bring her an Italian margarita. Maggie finally sets the menu down and orders fettucine alfredo. Just like last time.

“Damn, it’s nice to get out of those touchy-feely self-help vibes,” Sasha says, rolling her neck. “Olive Garden’s always full of like. Dysfunctional families trying to have a nice night for once. It’s great.”

“Are you always this cynical?”

“I’m really not,” she assures Maggie. “I’m just… I’m sick of people not saying what they mean. Like today, all those women… it was like we were only talking about the good stuff. The support we have from our families, the nice memories we have of our loved ones, blah blah.” She plunges a fork into her garden salad. “It’s just… it’s not good stuff. None of it is actually good stuff. It’s waking up at two in the morning and reaching across the bed and then _remembering_. It’s watching his name disappear from your recent calls list. It’s… it’s all _shit_.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says, and then more definitively, “ _yeah_. It sucks.”

“Right?” Sasha says, gesturing with her fork, which is still sporting a few leaves of lettuce. “You know what I really miss? But I can’t actually tell anyone without sounding ridiculous?”

“Shoot.”

“ _Sex_ ,” Sasha says. “Seriously. And it’s like, I’m not into hookups. I’m nowhere near ready to date again. I just… I miss being able to come home and just know that he’d be… there.”

Maggie laughs, actually honest-to-God laughs. “Hey, try being pregnant,” she says, leaning conspiratorially across the table. “It’s like… I’m just _on_ all the time and I can’t _do_ anything about it.”

Maggie keeps laughing, but the smile quickly melts off Sasha’s face. “You’re pregnant?” she says, looking crestfallen. “Oh… _oh_ , Maggie…”

“No, no, no, it’s not sad,” she says, but the tears are welling up now. “It’s not a sad thing, don’t you make it sad. It’s the only happy thing I got going for me right now.” She puts a hand on her belly. “I’m due at the end of May.”

* * *

 

After dinner, Maggie drives Sasha home. They finally cleared her apartment, and it stopped being a crime scene and became once again a home. Or something like home, anyway.

“We’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other, I guess,” Maggie says, stopped in front of Sasha’s building. “The trial.”

“Right.”

“Call me if you ever wanna talk,” Maggie tells her. “Or even if you don’t wanna talk. If you just wanna know that… that you’re not the only one who feels like you do. Just… call me.”

“You too,” Sasha says. And she climbs out of the warm car into the cold night.

The next day, Maggie spends fifteen minutes fruitlessly reorganizing her desk. Nothing gets put away or put in its place, just moved around, shifted. Everything except the photograph of her and Glenn that she’s had on her desk since the beginning of the school year.

She can’t stop her brain from spinning and spinning, smashing ideas together like a rock tumbler. Sasha and Dr. Denise and the women at the YMCA. Glenn and Abraham Ford and the man who took them both away. Pizza Portal, Olive Garden, the police station.

Finally, two thoughts collide and she buzzes the front office to have them call two students down to her room.

Carl gets there first. He’s quieter these days than he used to be. Maggie’s been over to Rick and Michonne’s a few times since The Night, and he usually just nods at her and says nothing. “Hey, Carl,” she says to him now. “Go ahead and have a seat.”

When Enid gets to Maggie’s office she looks confused. “I can wait outside,” she says, eyes on Carl.

“No, no, I want you both in here,” Maggie says. “Sit down, Enid. Let’s talk.”

She sinks into the second chair and nudges it as far from Carl as she can get in the cramped office. The two look incredibly uncomfortable, irritated, sullen— par for the course when it comes to teens, as far as Maggie’s concerned.

But she knows these two’ve seen worse than every other hormonal Converse-wearing Gen Z-er to sit in her office.

“I don’t know if you two know each other well,” Maggie admits, watching them for a response. Carl looks at Enid and then back at Maggie and Enid just shrugs. “Well. Enid, this is Carl. Carl, this is Enid.” They both just stare at her. “So. I called you both here because I’m assigning the two of you a project to work on. I want our school to host an assembly at the end of the school year about disability awareness and accessibility and… and combatting ableism, etcetera.” She takes a breath and tries to get her head on straight. It doesn’t feel like that long ago she _was_ a kid, but now they seem like unknown aliens to her. “Here,” she says, pushing some papers across her desk. “There’s some pamphlets, some articles to get you going. I’m hoping the two of you can do some networking, find people to come speak at this. Maybe talk to the special ed classes, talk to people in the community. I’ll keep checking in with you.”

Enid pauses from leafing through one pamphlet to glance up at Maggie. “I don’t get it,” she huffs. “Why me? There’s nothing wrong with me.” She’s looking at Carl’s eye, and he notices. “I mean. You know. Sorry, Carl. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Think of it this way,” Maggie says, putting her hands on her desk for emphasis. She’s hoping she sounds like the teacher in _Freedom Writers_ but she worries she’s more like the vice principal from _Ferris Bueller’s Day Off_. “Disability isn’t just about what you can see. And accessibility isn’t just about adding more wheelchair ramps. I think if you two put your heads together you can really make a difference at this school when it comes to things like tearing down negative mental illness stigmas, making people more aware of their own prejudices and ableism…”

She can still remember her dad hobbling up the stairs in the local library because they didn’t feel it was necessary to install an elevator. She can still remember Beth in the hospital with scars on her wrists while the kids at school whispered how “psycho” she was.

Maybe the assembly will be a bust. Maybe she won’t help anyone. But if bringing these two kids together can help Enid cope with her trauma and stress, if it can help Carl understand that he’s no less of a person without his right eye, then she can sleep a little better at night.


	4. Family & Friends

Rick comes into the school’s front office that afternoon to pick up Carl and he runs into Maggie. “Hey,” he says in that comforting Dad Voice, and without really thinking about it they sink into a tight hug. “How’re you doing?”

She just nods, her mouth tight. “I’m just… you know. I’m here.”

He sighs, shakes his head. “Baby okay?”

“Baby’s doing fine,” she assures him, a tiny smile dusting her face as she puts one hand on her abdomen. “You here for Carl?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Told him I’d take him out for McDonald’s after school. I’m just trying to… I don’t know. I don’t know. Trying to make things okay. Somehow.”

“I know,” she says. “Me too.” She tells him about the meeting with Carl and Enid, about her idea for the disability assembly. Both those kids need _something_ , and maybe it’s each other, or maybe it’s just something to keep their minds away from all the bad. “This whole thing. Glenn. I keep thinking of my dad.” The gruesome murder out on the farm, the long night, shooting Philip Blake. Rick remembers. “Rick, I feel like it’s following me.”

“No,” he says, a hand on her shoulder. “No, no, things are gonna get better.” No one should have to lose a father so young. And no one should have to be widowed so young, on the brink of parenthood. It’s not fair. Nothing’s ever fair, but this just seems cruel. “Things are gonna get better, Maggie. They have to.”

While they wait for Carl to finish with class, wait for the final bell to ring, Maggie suddenly realizes Rick’s keeping something from her, getting ready to drop a bombshell. He’s got that air of hesitation in his voice, and he keeps awkwardly shifting his stance.

“Listen,” he says finally, and there’s the Dad Voice again. “I gotta tell you something.” Another hesitation. “Michonne got put in charge of Negan’s defense.”

For a long moment there’s just a rushing in Maggie’s ears, and then she shakes her head. “How can they do that? How can they… they can’t…” The rushing turns into vertigo, and she grabs the edge of a nearby table to keep steady. “ _What_?”

“She— she tried to get out of it,” he says, reaching out a hand to steady her. She waves him away, standing up straight on her own. “But, listen, I’ve been thinking. She’s a good lawyer. And she’s gonna be a good lawyer in there. But you _know_ her. And you know she’s not gonna be cruel or tricky, not to you, not to that other woman—”

“Sasha.”

“Sasha, right. It’s shit. The whole thing is shit,” Rick admits. “But, hey, listen.” He looks down so he’s even with her eyes. “Listen. They’re gonna put him away. Michonne’s trying to convince that bastard to go for a plea. We’ve got… a witness. Carl. And now we know that the defense isn’t gonna try to break you down when you’re on the stand, right?”

Maggie nods, biting her lip. Finally, she says, “Michonne’s a good lawyer.”

“She’s the best damn lawyer in this town,” he agrees. “But she can’t change the facts. And she won’t. Negan is going to jail.”

“He’s going to jail,” she repeats, nodding. “Or. Death row.”

Rick looks at her for a long time, squinting just a little. “Thought you were against the death penalty.” He immediately regrets saying it, because it sounds ridiculous. After what Negan did to Glenn. After what he took from Maggie, from all of them.

She just shakes her head. “Thought I was, too.”

* * *

 

You can try as hard as you can to avoid someone, you can block them on every social media app in existence, you can find new routes to and from work, you can ignore them at your workplace, you can stay away from their favorite malls and movie theaters, but no matter what you do, you’re bound to run into them at Harris Teeter.

That afternoon, Sasha throws a box of Cheez-Its into her cart, rounds a corner and almost runs smack into Rosita Espinosa.

“Oh,” she says a little too loudly, trying to think of something to say that isn’t an expletive. “Hi. How are you—”

“Don’t,” Rosita says, looking like she just bumped into a giant talking cockroach rather than an old acquaintance from the fire station. “Just don’t.”

“Fine.”

They stand there in the frozen aisle, frozen themselves. “If you really wanna know? Shitty. I’m doing shitty.”

Sasha just nods, wants to say _Same_ but isn’t sure how that would go over. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t apologize to me.”

“I’m…” She snaps her mouth shut. She was about to apologize again. What the hell else is she supposed to say? Abe left Rosita for her a month before he was murdered. And to add insult to injury, Rosita was briefly a suspect before they caught Negan. She had to find out that her ex-boyfriend died from a cop shoving a light in her eyes and asking her if she did it.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

Sasha follows Rosita’s gaze to the reflector pendant around her neck. “One of the guys at the station gave it to me after… after,” she says. “He said it was Abraham’s.”

“Yeah, it was. I made it.” There couldn’t be more venom in her voice, and Sasha can practically feel the acid curdling in her stomach.

“Here,” she says, reaching to take the necklace off, but Rosita holds up a hand to stop her.

“Don’t,” she says. “You got everything else. Just makes sense for you to keep the damn necklace.”

“Rosita,” Sasha says, and she wants to reach out but she doesn’t know how. They have so much in common and it just drags them farther apart. And she doesn’t want to lie to herself, she knows she’s not the bigger person here. Neither of them is. They’re both bitter and angry and caught at opposing loose ends. Rosita’s angry at Abraham for ditching her but he’s dead, so all the anger has to go to Sasha. And Sasha’s currently pretty much angry at everything and everyone within a one-mile radius of herself at any given time. “I, um. I joined this women’s group, for mourning. We meet once a week. If you want to come, it might be… it might be good for you.”

Rosita serves her a blank stare. “I think we shared him enough while he was alive,” she says. “We don’t need to share the grieving process.” And then she disappears down the cereal aisle.


	5. Live Long

Rick and Carl are munching on their McDonald’s fries when Rick abruptly gets called to the station to question someone they just pulled in for breaking and entering. “Damn,” he mumbles, shoving a handful of fries in his mouth before handing the rest to Carl. “Here, come with me and I’ll have Michonne pick you up from the station.”

Carl just nods and collects their trash without a word.

Once they reach the police station, Rick apologetically dumps Carl with Tara and races off to the interrogation room. Carl sinks into the hard-backed chair beside Tara’s desk and looks up at her, his sulk like that of a basset hound’s. “You want a French fry?”

“Always,” Tara says, snatching one. Carl takes one for himself and they sit there, chewing thoughtfully for a moment. “So how’ve you been, Grimes?”

Carl shrugs. “Fine.”

“‘Fine,’” she repeats, mocking. He doesn’t sound fine. “Any new memes I’m missing out on? What’s cool to the kids these days?”

“I don’t know,” he says with another shrug. Sullen, sulking, brooding— just like his dad. “Hey, is there somewhere quiet where I can work on my homework?”

Tara sighs. “Yeah, you know where the breakroom is? That door down the hall?” She points, and Carl nods and then gathers his things and takes off.

He wanders down the hall, but once he’s sure he’s out of Tara’s line of sight, he skips right past the breakroom door and walks to the door of the evidence room. It’s not locked; he knew it wouldn’t be. He did inventory in here one time for service hours. People are going in and out often enough that they rarely lock it. Besides, there’s never much of anything valuable in there. Most drug busts are for minute amounts of marijuana, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of that in town.

Carl eases the door open and steps in, dropping his backpack on the floor. He feels a little like he’s sneaking into a tomb, everything in it pristinely mummified, awaiting resurrection.

There are labeled bags of broken off car parts, remnants of shattered headlights and paint scrapings. DNA evidence sits in kits along the shelves. There are pens and cups and phones that have been dusted for fingerprints.

Carl sees a pocket watch that used to be Glenn’s sitting on one shelf, wrapped in plastic and tagged, and beside it, he finds what he’s looking for.

The baseball bat glints in the dim hanging lights. The wood gleams, shiny, and the silvery barbed wire at the end reflects the gritty light. It’s clean; all the blood and tissue samples have been sent to the lab for testing. The handle’s been dusted and then cleaned off, too, the fingerprints collected and stored.

The bag zipped tightly around the bat crinkles when Carl peels it away. He’s careful, cautious, like opening a birthday present he knows is fragile. Once the bat’s free of its covering, Carl sets the plastic back on the shelf and hefts the bat in his right hand.

His heart lodges in his throat, and he focuses on the smoothness of the bat’s handle to ignore the blood pounding in his ears. It was this, this, here in his hand, this ruined everything. Ended everything— normalcy, goodness, life. Killed Glenn. Killed Sergeant Ford, the man Carl’s only met through photographs and stories in the news.

He feels like the pulse throbbing in his hand is not his own but the bat’s, like it’s a living thing, something evil and cruel with its own intentions and twisted desires. He wonders if it was like this, if the man who killed Glenn did it because the bat willed it.

Lucille. Negan had called it Lucille.

“Oh my God, Carl, what the hell are you doing,” Tara gasps all in a rush, zooming in and snatching Lucille— the _bat_ — out of Carl’s grasp. “You can’t touch that, that’s evidence, what are you even doing in here, why were you…” Somewhere in the midst of her barrage of questions and chastisements she realizes how heavy Carl’s breaths are, how his single eye watches her unseeingly. “Hey,” she says softly, leaning a little closer to him but not so close as to crowd him. “Hey. Carl.” It’s the voice she uses to talk to grieving family members, to small children. To the sheriff’s traumatized son. “Do you wanna talk? Do you wanna tell me what you were doing in here?”

Heavy breath, heavy breath. They’re almost like sobs but without tears, without sound. “I just. I just.” His chest rises and falls rapidly, too rapidly, and she wonders if she should make him sit down. “I keep remembering it and it’s like it didn’t even happen. Or like. Or like it happened but it didn’t happen to me, it happened to someone else, but then I don’t know why I _feel_ like this. All… empty. And. Scared. But it’s just that I kept thinking back and it just didn’t feel _real_ and I just wanted it to _feel real_ and so… and so… and so I thought that if I touched her… it… the bat… I thought that if I could just hold the bat the whole thing would feel real and I don’t know… I don’t even know if…” He trails off as his teeth begin to chatter, his hands trembling, his whole body shaking like a drowned cat.

“It’s okay,” Tara says, but it’s not. “It’s okay. I know someone who can help you. Alright? Carl?” In her head she’s making plans, sorting through facts to find a solution. In reality she just stands there at a loss. Should she hug him? Leave him alone? Give him a fist bump? “You ever met my girlfriend Denise?”

* * *

 

Maggie’s got her feet propped up at home, skimming through kids’ college applications essays, when her door swings open and her sister marches in. “Honey, I’m home,” she calls, like she lives there. “I’m stealing your clothes, okay? Some kid threw up on my scrubs.”

“Gross.”

Beth laughs and drops the bags of Chinese food in her hands on the coffee table. “Hey, you gotta get ready for that,” she says, leaning down and planting a kiss on Maggie’s baby bump. “Speaking of which, how’s my favorite little nibling?”

“What the hell is a nibling?” Maggie says, ripping into a box of rice.

“Gender neutral term for niece or nephew,” her sister supplies, jogging upstairs to change. “Because we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl,” she adds from Maggie’s bedroom.

Maggie considers it. _Nibling_. It sounds like a delicious kind of dumpling. She hopes Beth brought dumplings.

Minutes later, the two of them are wrapped in blankets on the couch and enjoying their weekly Chinese food dinner while Beth flips channels to find something unscripted and trashy. “You didn’t answer me,” she says.

“Hmm?”

“About my nibling.”

“Oh,” Maggie says, rubbing a hand over her belly. “They’re doing fine. We’re hanging in there.”

Beth looks at her with those sad, stormy eyes and Maggie starts tearing up. Since Glenn died, she hasn’t really had good days or bad days, just hard days and easier days. Today was hard.

“You remember what Dad told us after Mama died?” Beth says softly, nudging Maggie with her foot. “The pain doesn’t go away. You just make room for it.”

Maggie’s made of steel out there in the world. In front of Rick, in front of Carl and Sasha and Dr. Denise and Tara.

Not in front of Beth, though. She dissolves.

“I can’t,” she says, clutching at her sister. “I can’t make room for it. I can’t. It’s too big. It’s too awful.” She hiccups through a sob. “And… and it can’t even be over yet. There’s a trial. I have to stand up and face that… monster. And I just found out, I just found out Michonne is the defense attorney.”

“ _What_?”

“I know,” Maggie says, trying to stem the tears. “It just doesn’t _end_. I just want it to end.”

Beth pulls her into her arms and holds her tight, both a little sister full of love and a caring nurse there to comfort. “Maybe,” she says, “it’s not about making room for his death. Maybe it’s just making room for him, and for his memory.” She sniffs and clutches Maggie tighter. “He would’ve loved this baby.”

“I know,” she says, wiping away a tear. “God, and you know it’s past December first now, so he’d be watching all those ABC 25 Days of Christmas movies. And singing along.” She can picture him now with a Santa hat on, bouncing their baby on one knee and singing Christmas carols to him. Her imagined image disappears like smoke. “I just want him back,” she tells Beth. “Yeah, I want Negan in prison. Or… or worse, I don’t know. But no matter what happens to him…” She sighs. “Glenn stays dead.”

“He’s not really dead,” Beth says. “As long as we remember him.”

Maggie breathes in a deep breath, taking comfort, until the words actually click. “That… is a line from _The Wrath of Khan_.”

“Yeah,” Beth laughs. “Glenn was the one who made me watch it.”

And then somewhere along the line, Beth grabs the wine— and a bottle of sparkling cider for Maggie— and they put _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_ into the DVD player and they watch it like they’re just normal sisters on a normal night. They cry when Spock dies, and it’s a relief to cry over someone fictional.

When Beth says goodnight, she throws up the Vulcan salute through the window beside Maggie’s front door. “Live long and prosper, Maggie.”


	6. Smile and Wince

Denise’s office has big windows and a lot of vintage tin signs and posters. Carl wedges himself into one of two empty chairs and waits for Dr. Denise to walk in carrying a plastic cup of water. “Hey there,” she says, handing him the cup. “So you’re Tara’s friend, huh?” She sits down and picks up her clipboard.

“I guess,” he says, picking at a thread on his jeans. “She works with my dad.”

“Right, right,” she says, and fixes her glasses. Carl wonders what she can see just by looking at him. The bandage over one eyes, the bags under the other. “Now, I wanna make something clear. Everything you say here is confidential. The only time I’ll ever share anything with your dad is if I genuinely think you’re gonna hurt yourself or someone else. And I won’t tell Tara anything. This is for _you_ , and to help _you_.”

“Okay,” Carl says, setting the water cup down on the floor. “What do I do? Like what do I talk about?”

“Anything you want to tell me,” she says. “You must be incredibly shaken after what you had to see. I can’t even imagine. I want to help you work through that, if I can. Why don’t we start with the night it all happened?”

He stiffens, pales. His hands clutch aimlessly at the arms of the chair he’s in. “I told my dad and the other officers. Negan came in with a bat, and he wanted all the money, and he killed Glenn. That’s what happened.”

“Right,” she says, tapping her pen on the clipboard. She fixes her glasses again. “Listen, Carl, I’m not a cop or a lawyer. I’m not asking for a witness statement. I want to know how you _felt_. How you still feel. I’m more about emotions than facts right now, okay?”

Carl takes a shaky breath. “I felt scared,” he says. “Obviously I felt scared.”

“Were you angry?”

“Obviously I was angry,” he says, eye darting around the room. “He came in with a bat and asked for all the money. Then he killed Glenn and left.”

It’s the way he says it, so rehearsed, that makes Denise straighten up in her seat. “Carl,” she says carefully, “did he do something else while he was at the pizza place?”

He shakes his head, looking like a jerky audio-animatronic. “No,” he says. “He came in with a bat and asked for all the money and then he killed Glenn and left.” He swallows. “Then I called 911.”

“Your bandage was off,” she says, remembering notes from the scene. “Carl, do you want to tell me why your bandage was off?”

He’s quiet, like he’s deciding, but she thinks more likely he’s trying to think of an excuse. “No,” he says finally. “No, I c— can’t… I can’t. I can’t.”

“Okay,” she sighs. “Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about your family.”

* * *

 

At school, Maggie finally gets a break during a particularly hectic day to sit down and have lunch. Winter break starts next Monday and students have been flooding into her office for last-minute college application help.

She’s relieved to finally get a chance to eat, and then the fire alarm goes off.

Annoyed, Maggie files out to the parking lot with everyone else, shivering and tucking her coat tighter around herself, her pasta salad lodged under one arm. She’s gonna eat her lunch, damn it, even if it is outside in the freezing cold while they wait for the firetruck to pull up.

Outside, she runs into a guilty-looking Eugene Porter.

“Um,” she says, sidling up to the science teacher. “What did you do?”

“I won’t lie,” he admits. “There was an altercation between a Bunsen burner and my necktie.” The necktie is suspiciously absent. Maggie groans.

“If I catch frostbite, I’m suing you.”

“And I’ll accept those consequences,” Eugene says. “But considering it’s over forty degrees and the fire station is approximately five minutes away and it should not take them long to okay the building, the chances of your toes turning into penguin pellets are highly—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maggie says, cracking open her Tupperware. “Crap. I forgot my fork.”

“I’m prepared for that.” Eugene reaches into an inner pocket and hands her an extendable fork. At this point, Maggie’s learned not to ask. She thanks him and walks away to join the cluster of women from the front office.

When the firetruck pulls up, because they need to inspect every alarm set off, Maggie watches the door expectantly. She sees a stunningly beautiful man with long hair tied back in a bun hop out. As he walks toward the place where their principal stands, she can’t help but think he looks like paintings she’s seen of Jesus Christ.

Second out of the truck is Sasha, wearing bulky pants and a thin black shirt, her hair braided back tightly at the nape of her neck. Maggie gives her a little wave and Sasha, looking bemused, jogs over to meet her.

“So what happened?” Sasha says. “Smoking in the boys’ room?”

“Chemistry teacher gone wild,” Maggie says, nodding toward Eugene. “He says it was a Bunsen burner fire.”

“Typical,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Okay, Jesus and I will go clear the building. See ya.” She and the guy with the man bun head into the school before Maggie can ask if Man Bun’s name is really Jesus.

Sasha comes out about fifteen minutes later, followed by Jesus, who goes to talk to the principal again and give the all clear. Meanwhile, Sasha heads back over to Maggie. “Sorry you had to stand out here in the cold,” she says, awkwardly chafing her hands up and down Maggie’s shoulders like she can warm her up.

Maggie eyes the thin fabric of Sasha’s shirt. “Yeah, how are you not cold?”

“I have thick blood,” she says, and then laughs. “And thermal underwear.”

Students and faculty begin surging back inside the school, chatting, shivering. “Well,” Maggie says, resealing her lunch container. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“What?”

“At grief group.”

“Oh.” Sasha doesn’t necessarily look like she’s forgotten, just like she’s avoiding it. “Yeah. I guess I’ll see you then.”

“Why don’t we plan to get dinner afterward?” Maggie says. “So we have something to look forward to after spilling our guts.”

Sasha smiles, her eyes squinting in the winter sunlight. “Yeah, that sounds good to me.”

* * *

 

The next day, Denise has a dispenser of hot chocolate ready to go for them in the sunny YMCA multipurpose room. Maggie grabs herself a cup and gets one for Sasha, who rushes in a minute after it starts.

“Hi everyone,” she says quickly, settling into her seat. “Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s okay,” Maggie says. “My husband’s late, too.”

Sasha chokes on her hot cocoa while Dr. Denise and the others look shocked at Maggie’s gallows humor.

Carol cracks up, surprising everyone. As the room settles, Sasha sees Maggie quirk a small smile. “Okay, okay,” Denise says, adjusting her glasses, trying to take charge. “Today we’re going to work on getting through death by remembering life. I want everyone to share something good about the person you lost.”

Jessie goes first, with that perky smile, and talks about her husband Pete and how he used to bring her flowers on her birthday. Sasha can’t help but think that that sounds like the bare minimum for a husband to do, but she keeps her mouth shut.

An older woman, Deanna, shares memories of sitting on the porch with her husband and drinking coffee and listening to him ramble on about architecture. He was a professor, apparently.  

Carol says only that she misses her loved one, carefully avoiding pronouns or any distinguishing comments. Denise looks nervous but moves on to the next woman.

Eventually, it’s Maggie’s turn to share something. She sets her empty cocoa cup down and smooths her hands over her pants. “Glenn had this Polaroid camera he found at a thrift store,” she says. “And one morning he took a photo of me sleeping. And it was… awful.” She laughs at the memory. “I told him to throw it away, but he didn’t. He carried it around with him everywhere he went.” She smiles a little, like she’s done, but then the smile drops from her face. “I just. I just realized… he must’ve had it on him the night… on The Night.” Her eyes flood and she looks down, and the whole room just watches in silence until she says, “Can the next person go please,” all at once, all in a rush.

When it’s Sasha’s turn, she stares down in her lap and fiddles with her hands instead of facing the group as she speaks. “A friend of mine down at the station told me that Abraham was the only person he knew who could make him smile and wince at the same time.” A pause, and then she looks up. “That’s… that’s all I can think of, sorry.”

“That’s good,” Denise says, and moves on. The woman beside Sasha shares a touching reminiscence about baking cookies with her mother. Sasha’s listening, but her eyes are once again on Maggie.


End file.
